Emulationstation for Pyra?

[Stouffa]

I've been having good fun lately having bought a Raspberry Pi kit and messing around with some prebuilt RetroPie images. There's a lot of progress there at present to make things more easily customisable and user friendly for the less technically advanced users out there like myself! Recent additions allow the creation of a favourites list for easy starting off your favourite games across all installed systems and soon you'll be able to set up custom collections based on whatever you choose.

My main point of this is that I think this would be a great addition to the Pyra world, and it would be a good selling point, the idea of simply slotting in a SD card and having all my game roms easily accessible under one eye catching frontend sounds great!



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[Swordfish II]

The Pandora is super simple, you download an emulator from an "app" store and open your roms. I have zero doubt the Pyra will be as user friendly.

Certainly it also has the in depth command line abilities as well though.

 

[Stouffa]

That's fair enough, that's always been one of the main advantages of the Pandora as a mobile device, I just like the idea of a unified frontend with screen shots etc where most of the emulators function in the same manner. The closest I can think of on Pandora was Picklelauncher, where some of the file selectors were themed to match the emulator! Also the way you can run Amiga games on the RetroPie certainly deserves consideration for the Pyra, it's very impressive

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[levi]

The Pandora can be a bit varied with its interfaces though. My favourite is the old picklelauncher based ones, but they're getting a little thin on the ground. Then there's the plus ex ones which have a more touch-based interface, but do have a standard way of setting up bluetooth and USB controllers which is nice. Then there are the various home computer emulators which generally need a special key to open the menu then a hand crufted menu to select the disc image to load and then reboot (at least where snapshots aren't generally available).

To a certain extent you probably need all these interfaces for some of the non-rom or CD based consoles, or even for MAME's DIP settings to get the most out of those systems, so unless the interface contains a usable plug-in system for these settings, and the emulator authors have made use of those, you'll be stuck with those varieties.

 

[Stouffa]

From what I understand of it, Emulationstation is built mostly on top of Retroarch emulators, and themed then around individual systems. Even most of the computer emulators launch from within the same frontend but can be individually configured as needs be. One of the more interesting setups is the Amiga one, which runs on a forked emulated of uae4arm and uses individual configuration files for each game, with a special boot program to configure the emulator automatically on startup. It makes Amiga gaming pretty much as easy as console, you don't ever need to see an emulator menu unless you need to change a setting (and a single key press brings you back to the front end)

With the limited power of the Raspberry pi, it's emulation capacity realistically stops around the N64 (though some Dreamcast games run pretty well). I like the thought of the Pyra functionally as like an east emulation version of the Switch, plug in a Hdmi and a controller and you're good to go for big screen retro goodness!!

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[slaeshjag]

Odds are that the emulators that are the most fine-tuned for the Pyra will not be the ones included in retroarch.

 

[levi]

Retroarch is pluggable isn't it? They could be targetting towards its api if that makes sense for anyone.

 

[elwing]

Honestly, emulation station is great on lots of devices, but on my Pandora, I prefer the app store we got an the simple pnd integration... Emulation station is great for your emu, but I don't think it blends really well with other programs and applications...

 

[levi]

To be honest, how well do the Pandora emus really blend with other running programs? Because of the way they use framebuffer, I don't think you can just alt-tab away from them onto something else. You can maybe alt-tab away then switch the framebuffer using the hotkey (fn+L) but I've not tried that. For me, what allows me to use emulators on the go is easily accessible savestates, and a quick way to exit the emulator. I'm not sure how many of the picklelauncher emus have savestates, and I'm not sure how accessible the other emulators handle it, other than mednafen which I know has savestates of a keyboard shortcut and can be exit by pressing esc, but mednafen doesn't run that well on my Pandora.

To be honest it's slightly academic to be since I broke my LCD, so I can only use my Pandora as an emulator through it's TV out, and for that I need to dedicate some time towards it, so I can't use it fill a gap on the train or anything else like that any more. I'm really looking forward to getting back into that with my Pyra!

 

[PowerGod]

From what I understand of it, Emulationstation is built mostly on top of Retroarch emulators, and themed then around individual systems.

Maybe I didn't understand correctly what you wrote, but I want to point out that Emulationstation is just an interface, it doesn't contain emulators at all, and it's up to you to provide the kind of emulator that you want to be used with every profile.
So, if retroarch can run with all its fancy interface, it can be the easier choice to use, but if it doesn't work, other emulators can be used instead.

Anyway, if Emulationstation will be ported to Pandora, it potentially could launch others, and already present, PNDs with specific emus...

 

[Stouffa]

Maybe I didn't understand correctly what you wrote, but I want to point out that Emulationstation is just an interface, it doesn't contain emulators at all, and it's up to you to provide the kind of emulator that you want to be used with every profile.
So, if retroarch can run with all its fancy interface, it can be the easier choice to use, but if it doesn't work, other emulators can be used instead.

Anyway, if Emulationstation will be ported to Pandora, it potentially could launch others, and already present, PNDs with specific emus...

If Emulation Station could be run as a DBP file that integrates with the emulators that would be ideal. Since the Psp and GP2X I've had numerous machines capable of some level of emulation, but oddly enough it's only since I got a Pi set up that I've gotten my family interested. Playing retro games on a tv seems a lot more authentic in some ways. With the ease of Emulation Station as a frontend, my (non technically) minded relatives have had great fun playing old games and we've enjoyed great multiplayer sessions. I can see that the Pyra could be used as a Retro gaming Switch if configured correctly, just plug in a Hdmi, a hub and controllers and away you go!

(I know this was possible on the Pandora, but by the time I got the necessary cables, my new tv didn't support them! )

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[second exodous]

Getting used to all the quarks of all the emulators on my Pandora has been a slight headache, not horrible though. Every emulator is different on the keys to operate it, although for most space opens the menu that everything can be done through.

One problem with a lot of them is they don't allow cheats and if they do it is often a very complicated process. I'm not 9 years old anymore, I have things to do in my life but still want to pass games. Infinite lives or continues, as I didn't need them before I had a job/family/taxes/shave/fueling my car up/baldness or whatever, I do now, my time is very VERY finite. Retroarch seems to enable cheats on all emulators.

 

[PowerGod]

One problem with a lot of them is they don't allow cheats and if they do it is often a very complicated process. I'm not 9 years old anymore, I have things to do in my life but still want to pass games. Infinite lives or continues, as I didn't need them before I had a job/family/taxes/shave/fueling my car up/baldness or whatever, I do now, my time is very VERY finite. Retroarch seems to enable cheats on all emulators.

There are no excuses, you are demoted to casual gamer status now !!

 

[Eight Bit]

One problem with a lot of them is they don't allow cheats and if they do it is often a very complicated process. I'm not 9 years old anymore, I have things to do in my life but still want to pass games. Infinite lives or continues, as I didn't need them before I had a job/family/taxes/shave/fueling my car up/baldness or whatever, I do now, my time is very VERY finite. Retroarch seems to enable cheats on all emulators.

There are no excuses, you are demoted to casual gamer status now !!

Whahahaha!